


A Hole in the World

by Edonohana



Category: Dark Tower - Stephen King
Genre: Desert, Food, Gen, Non-Euclidean Geometry, Portals, Snacks & Snack Food, Wilderness Survival
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-15
Updated: 2020-07-15
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:20:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25276072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Edonohana/pseuds/Edonohana
Summary: The ka-tet finds another portal. Or rather, a portal finds them.
Relationships: Jake Chambers & Eddie Dean & Susannah Dean & Roland Deschain & Oy
Comments: 5
Kudos: 12
Collections: Eat Drink and Make Merry 2020





	A Hole in the World

**Author's Note:**

  * For [scioscribe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scioscribe/gifts).



There was a hole in the world, and his ka-tet had fallen into it. 

Like a mouth, it opened and closed. It had been big as a well when Eddie and Susannah and Jake and Oy had tumbled in, along with her wheelchair and all of their packs and even their campfire. Only Roland’s preternatural reflexes had saved him; even deep in sleep, he’d sensed _something_ and rolled aside, shouting out a warning—for what, he did not know.

And then the lips of the world had parted, leaving him scrabbling at the brink and swinging up his legs an instant before the mouth closed, knitting together the desert sands as if no hole had ever been, and no ka-tet had ever settled down to build a fire and talk and sleep. 

Had he been an instant slower, he’d have had his legs snipped off at the hips, like Susannah’s. Had he been two instants slower, he’d have gone with the rest of them. Dead? He thought not. The hole was a mouth, but it was also a door. It had opened and closed, and it would open again. The next time it did, he’d reach in and pull them out, or jump in to fetch them back. 

All he had to do was wait, and the gunslinger was the most patient of men. But there was one thing he couldn’t outwait, and that was the needs of his own body. He had the clothes he’d slept in and he had his guns, for he never slept far from them and had snatched them up at his first alarm. But he had nothing else, not even his canteen. And in this vast barren desert, there was nothing to hunt. Even the wood they’d burned for their fire had been brought with them, strapped to Susannah’s wheelchair.

Nevertheless, Roland waited, through the night and through the blazing heat of the day and through another cold and weary night. His throat was dry and his eyes burned and ached, but he waited and watched. His ka-tet was somewhere on the other side of that hole, and he would not leave them. 

In the darkest hour before dawn, the hole opened again. If he hadn’t been watching so closely, he would have missed it. A thread of light, silver as the moon, shone up out of the earth from a hole no bigger than the head of a pin. 

Rushing to the light, he bent close to it and called out the names of his ka-tet, again and again until the light winked out. The mouth had closed. He swore in a hoarse voice, then dozed, guessing that the hole would not open again that night. 

Roland woke to a burning sun and a throat dry as old jerky. He had to find water, and soon. If his ka-tet didn’t need rescue, if they would find a way back without him, they could follow the Path of the Beam as well as he; if he walked on, they could catch up.

But that pinprick of light made him believe that the hole would open again before he died of thirst. The first time, it had been big and in the middle of the night. The second time, tiny and near night’s end a day later. That wasn’t a pattern to to rely on, but Roland guessed that the hole’s size would change again, and it would open in another day, approximately. Early morning, if the time kept moving forward; midnight, if the times alternated.

Once again, he dug himself into the sand, to cool off as best he could. He tried to sleep, but his throat hurt and his head ached and his dreams taunted him with cool sweet water that was always just out of reach, or proved to be a mirage, or smelled of poison when he came close enough to drink. Again and again he awoke, head throbbing and breath rasping, half-delirious with thirst. The cold of the night brought some relief, but in his weakened state, he soon began to shiver. 

Surely his ka-tet was fine where they were, with the canteens and the food in the packs. He could go on, hoping that there might be water ahead. It wasn’t too late. 

He thought that, and yet he stayed where he was, immovable as stone. 

On the third day, even the earliest morning sun shining off the glittering sands was like to blind a person. Every time Roland blinked, it felt sandpaper scraping his eyes. But he watched, and when the hole opened again, he didn’t miss it. It was no wider than a wolverine’s burrow: wide enough for Oy, but not for the rest of his ka-tet, not even Jake. 

“Jake!” The name felt like it was tearing through his throat. “Susannah! Eddie! Oy!”

No one answered. When he got down on his knees, he saw a disorienting vista of dim light and strange shapes. He squinted until it resolved itself into rectangles and cylinders and pouches suspended from a rack of wire. It was at once strange and oddly familiar, and there was something disorienting about it. Something wrong. He puzzled over it, his thoughts moving slowly through his overheated head, until he remembered snatching Jake from the monstrous house-face and then up from the earth. 

It was his perspective that was wrong: he was looking down, but seeing up. The objects weren’t suspended from the rack, they were resting on it; he saw the scene as if he was lying on the ceiling above them. Once he knew that, he recognized that he was looking at a shop, like the drugstore he’d walked Mort’s body through. 

He had no need for potions, but he did have a desperate need for drink and food. And though he couldn’t puzzle out the writing without help from a Mortcypedia, he thought he’d seen similar metal cans when Eddie had bought him the dog popkins and the sugar drink.

The memory of that sweetness enticed him. Too much, perhaps, and that made him wary. Roland had no desire to lose any more fingers. He took off his shirt, knotted the sleeves and the collar so it made an open bag, and tore a strip along the bottom to use as a strap he could hold when he lowered it into the hole. 

Only then did he realize that it wouldn’t work. Once the shirt was in the shop, it would be subject to the gravity of the place it was in; it would fall back down toward him.

Stubbornly, he tried anyway. As soon as he dropped it through, the perspective swung dizzyingly. Now he seemed to be lying on the floor below the shelves, looking up at them, and his bag was dropping down (or rising up, from the perspective of someone in the shop) until it was below (above) the things he needed to reach. Roland swung it by the cloth strap, trying to catch a can and knock it into his net, but his angle was wrong. He’d need a stick to sweep anything in, but he had none. Only his guns, which he was unwilling to risk and which weren’t long enough without risking his hand and wrist as well. 

And sand, of course. There was plenty of that. 

Quickly, not hesitating to wonder if it would work, he began to push sand through the hole. Like the bag, it fell down. Or rather, rose up. If he thought of it that way, he could see the sand rising upward, going through the wire shelves and clinging to the bottoms of the bags and cans and boxes until, one by one, the weight detached them from the shelves and they fell into Roland’s shirt. 

When it began to feel heavy, he pulled it up—down—out. It bulged enough that he had to jiggle it gently to get it out of the hole. 

Once it was out, he again shouted, but there was no answer. He hadn’t expected one. His ka-tet wasn’t there, or they’d have answered the first time. They’d been deposited somewhere else, or had moved on, or—

The hole closed. 

Roland emptied his shirt out on to the sand. The objects fell with rustling and rattling and, best of all, sloshing sounds. He snatched up the closest sloshing can. It was made of a light silvery metal with a round sigil of red, white, and blue. He pried up the loop on top, and its clever mechanism pierced the depression beside it with a popping sound.

Liquid exploded from the can, spraying his face and chest. Only the familiar metallic-sweet smell stopped him from flinging it away as a booby trap. Bubbling liquid foamed up from the opening in the can, running over his hand and dripping to the sand. Roland quickly dented one of the bags, then held the can over the shallow cup he’d formed so none of the drink would be wasted—assuming it was a drink. 

He touched a finger to the liquid and tasted it. With that one drop, he abandoned all caution and drank greedily, sucking the bubbling drink from its container and then licking it and his hand. It was like the sweet drink Eddie had given him, a concentrated liquid sugar, soothing his throat and filling him with energy. When he thought back, he remembered that the other drink had also fizzed on his tongue, though nowhere near as much. The drink must be like beer, which bubbled most when it was new, though he could taste that it contained no alcohol.

Roland carefully lifted the bag where he’d caught the overflow and tilted it into his mouth, savoring it. If anything, it was even sweeter than Eddie’s drink. It left his mouth sticky, but his thirst was quenched and his headache was gone, though hunger still gnawed at his belly. 

He spread out his finds on the sand to examine them. He had the empty silver can, which he could use to carry water later. He reconsidered that plan when he discovered that it didn’t re-seal. Perhaps a special tool was needed. 

There were two more sloshing cans, one the same size as the silver can and one smaller. The smaller one was brown and white, with a sigil of a queen, crowned but naked, in green and white. The other had no sigil. Instead, the entire can was decorated with a colorful painting of a desert rather more fertile than the one he was in, with a pair of tall cacti standing in green ground cover.

 _Three days of drink,_ Roland thought. _Even if I never manage to pull more from the hole, I have three days._ Then, with somewhat better cheer, he decided, _Six days. I can go without another three, if I must._

With the new clarity of thought that the sweet drink had given him, he knew that without some sign that he should go elsewhere, he would not abandon this spot. The hole opened here. His ka-tet was on the other side of the hole. Here he would stay, until he found them again or died waiting. 

He turned his attention back to his finds. He had six more items, all of them small. Only two, a bright red apple and a cylindrical yellow cake, both wrapped in clear film, were recognizable. The smallest object was a crystal-clear box of rattling green pills, which no doubt were medicine—perhaps lifesaving, perhaps a mere nostrum for stopped bowels or sneezing, but useless to him without the knowledge of what they were for. He set it aside. Additionally, he had a light, puffy bag which rattled when he shook it, a bar wrapped in shiny paper, and a box with a clear window through which he could see a set of short, twisted red ropes. 

Even if only the apple and cake proved edible, he now had enough food to give him strength for a few more days. He should have saved the drink for last, but since he hadn’t, he would keep the apple to moisten his throat. 

He pulled the crackling clear film from the cake and bit into it, cupping his hand beneath it to catch any crumbs. The cake was soft and sweet, if somewhat dry, and filled with a white cream that was sweeter still. He had intended to savor it, but found himself devouring it in three bites. Surely, this much sugar would sustain him in his wait. 

After all that sweetness, he expected to find the apple sour. It was not. Nor was it sweet. Its thick skin was bitter and tough, and the flesh within mealy, juiceless, and tasteless. Roland ate it all, leaving only the seeds and stem, but it was welcome only for the strength it would give him—if indeed it did. Its non-taste reminded him of all those soft, flabby, careless people onboard the airplane. This was the fruit he would have expected them to grow, providing neither flavor nor nourishment. 

He dug himself back into the sand. This time, weary but less tormented by hunger or thirst, he slept without dreams for the rest of the day and all through the night. He hoped that his perception would awaken him if the hole opened again, but guessed that it would not until the next morning, a few hours later than this time. If he was right, he would know its pattern.

Roland awoke the next morning at dawn, dreadfully thirsty. He opened the large can with the cactus painting, warily and holding it over the yellow bag, but it didn’t bubble. It was filled with the sweetest drink yet, colored orange. It gave him energy, but didn’t quench his thirst or fill his belly. Hoping for something more substantial, he opened the yellow bag. It contained a mass of crisp, salty rings, light as feathers. They were delicious, but melted away in his mouth like snow, and were no more satisfying. 

As the morning lengthened, he watched and waited. Soon…

The hole opened. It was large enough to step into, though not the huge pit it had been the first time. Roland saw another upside-down vista, but a more recognizable one this time: a desert, less barren than the one he was in, with a sky of sand studded with cacti and huge boulders. 

Far in the distance, sticking to the sand like geckos crawling across a ceiling, his ka-tet toiled. Susannah was in her chair, with Eddie struggling to push her; Jake walked beside her, stooped to help, with Oy trotting at his heels.

Roland might have leaped down to join them, but he was much higher up this time. If he fell from the sky, he would break his neck.

“Susannah!” Roland shouted. “Eddie! Oy! Jake!”

Jake, panting, half-sobbing, shouted, “Roland! Where are you?”

Roland dropped the empty can into the hole. The perspective swung again, but this time it was sideways. The can flew through the air, smacked into the side of a cactus, and dropped to the sand. But before he could see if that had given them any direction, the hole closed again.

His relief at the sight of his ka-tet, together and unharmed, was tempered by frustration. Where were they, and how could they get to each other? There was a clear pattern in when the hole opened, one day and a few hours later each time, but he couldn’t see what guided where it moved to, or how big it was, or how long it stayed open. This was the sort of problem Susannah was good at, not him. He could only hope she was figuring it out from where she was.

At least they had food and water. He was down to the smallest can and the smallest package. 

He opened them both the next morning, to give him strength to wait for the hole’s appearance, which he judged would occur around noon. The bar was flaky and crumbly, coated with a melting brown substance and orange inside. But it was pure sugar, and though he was beginning to realize that the energy obtained purely from that was more intense but also more short-lived than that gotten from ordinary food, he was grateful for it nonetheless. 

To his great surprise and pleasure, the little can contained strong, sweet coffee. He had been so sure that it would be another drink that was not of his world that finding it familiar felt like a portent. He hoped that it presaged another return to the familiar: his ka-tet together again, and a return to their journey along the Path of the Beam.

The sun hung blinding overhead when the hole opened, exactly where it had been the first time, a vast and gaping pit. 

A hand grabbed his ankle. 

Roland gave a cry of shock, for the hand had come at an angle that could not have emerged from the pit, then twisted around to seize the hand by the wrist. He gave a jerk, a weight struck his side, and he and Jake were falling in a heap, perilously close to the edge. But they had no time to greet each other, let alone to embrace. The both rolled over, lying on their bellies beside the pit, reaching in.

Eddie boosted Oy down—up—across to Jake, who pulled him out. Susannah flung up a pack, and it fell _down_ , thumping into the sand. Eddie tossed another, then lifted Susannah on his shoulders. Jake reached for her, but she already had her hands on the edge of the hole. Her shoulder muscles bulged as she lifted herself out, to fall from the air and land in a practiced roll. She quickly righted herself, rearing up to help Roland and Jake catch her wheelchair as Eddie levered it up and out. 

“Hurry, sugar!” Susannah cried. 

Eddie jumped upward, hands reaching. Roland caught him around the forearms and swung him out. This time, he managed, though just barely, not to tumble over when Eddie fell sideways out of the air.

“Three… Two… One,” Jake counted. The hole vanished.

“Looks like you had yourself a nine-course feast,” remarked Eddie, looking down at the empty cans and wrappers and bags, which Roland had thriftily set aside. “Were you too full for the Tic-Tacs and Twizzlers, or did we interrupt you?”

Susannah passed Roland the canteen. “I don’t know what all that is, but I bet you’re thirsty after eating it all.”

Taking that first gulp of water, Roland thought that he would never call water “sweet” again. It was hot and tasted like leather, and it was more welcome than all the sugar in the world. 

“Let’s get out of here,” Jake said. “I know it won’t open again for another three hours and it’ll be tiny, but…”

“Open,” barked Oy, backing away from the stretch of sand that sometimes wasn’t there.

They took their packs, Roland tucking away the things he’d gathered, and left in a hurry, not pausing to speak until they were well away. Then, setting a slower pace, they caught each other up on what had happened during their separation.

“We landed in the desert around midnight,” said Eddie. “We fell sideways, a foot or so above the ground and onto soft sand, so we weren’t hurt. It was just…”

“Strange,” said Susannah. “We were off a highway somewhere. Arizona, California, Nevada… There weren’t any signs we ever saw. We called for you, then waited, hoping the poral would open again. A couple hours later, we heard your voice, shouting. We ran to it, into the desert, but by the time we got there, it was gone.”

“A few hours later?” Roland asked, then suddenly understood Jake’s remark about the portal opening again in three hours. “Time moved differently for us. For me it was over a day between openings.”

Eddie looked guilty. “Oh—When I saw all those wrappers, I thought…”

“That I had turned glutton, and gobbled them all in a day?” Roland asked. “I might have, had I an infinite amount of those foods. But go on.”

“I wanted to stay where we’d heard you,” Jake said. “But Eddie thought we shouldn’t.” 

“I had a feeling,” Eddie said. Roland was proud to see that he didn’t duck his head and mumble, ashamed, as he once would have. “I thought we should go on. So we went back to the freeway and walked on the shoulder till we got to a gas station. The sun was just rising and no one was there yet. Just as we got there, we heard a clatter. When we looked in the windows, we saw a bunch of stuff knocked off the shelves and desert sand all over the floor.”

“But not the sand of the desert we were in,” said Jake. “Once it was light enough to see, we could tell that the sand we were walking on was kind of reddish. The sand on the floor was _this_ sand—white. So we knew it was you. And that’s when Susannah figured it all out.”

She said, “There was a clock on the gas station wall. It was a few minutes after 6:00 AM. We’d fallen through around midnight, and we’d heard you a couple hours later. 12:00, 3:00 AM, 6:00 AM. Moving right round the clock face.” Susannah traced a half-circle in the air, high to low. “That was how the portal was moving, too. Around the clock. So we knew that the next time it opened, it would be 9:00 AM. Here.” She moved her finger again, swinging it in an arc to her left, low to high. Clockwise.

“Enemy fighter at nine o’clock, sir!” Eddie said. Roland was impressed; he hadn’t realized that Eddie knew that handy method of signaling danger. 

Susannah nudged Eddie, and went on, “Its size was a pattern too. Tiny, small, medium, big, and then it re-sets to tiny. If we’d had a clock we could watch, I could’ve figured out the pattern of how long it stayed open. But we didn’t. And I couldn’t figure out the exact diameter of the clock face, or the space between the portals. I could’ve done it by counting steps, but we didn’t have time to re-trace them. I had to estimate where 9:00 would be, and I was off. That’s why we missed you.”

“But we did count steps from the gas station to where you dropped the can,” said Jake. “So we counted the same number to noon, which was right back at the side of the road. And here we are.”

“Here we are,” echoed Roland. He wondered idly whether the hole was a natural phenomena, or some wizardly business, then dismissed it from his mind. His ka-tet was back, and they could now continue their journey toward the Tower. That was all that mattered.

“No wonder you were thirsty,” said Susannah. “I thought it had just been twelve hours for you, and I thought that was plenty!”

“You didn’t take anything from the shop, did you?” Roland asked. 

“No, sorry,” said Jake. “It was locked up, and it had a sign that said it had a security system. We were lucky you getting the snacks didn’t set it off.”

“Don’t look so down,” Eddie said. “You’ve still got the Tic Tacs and the Twizzlers.” When Roland looked blank, he elaborated, “The little green pellets and the red ropes. They’re candy.”

“Oh. Well, we shall share them.”

“I'll pass,” said Susannah. “Never was much for that packaged stuff. Give me a peach cobbler or a dish of ice cream any day.”

“You can have the Tic Tacs,” said Jake. “I’ll take a Twizzler or two.”

“Same,” said Eddie. 

Oy made a sound like a disgusted sneeze.

“I read a book once called _The Chocolate Touch_ ,” said Jake. “About a boy who loves chocolate. He eats a magic chocolate, and gets the power to turn everything he touches into chocolate. He ends up hating it.”

He gave Roland a meaningful look. 

“What he’s trying to say is, are you sick of all that sugar now… sugar?” Susannah.

“No. The tipplers and green pills will be a fine treat after another meal of jerky.”

“Twizzlers,” said Eddie.

“Tibblers?” Roland tried. 

“Izzlers!” barked Oy. He spun around, chasing his tail, barking, “Ibblers! Ipplers!”

Laughing, Jake ran after him, shouting, “Jelly Belly! Laffy Taffy!”

"Elly Elly! Affy Affy!

Susannah smiled, but shook her head. “Hope he doesn’t give himself heat exhaustion. We could have a whole lot of desert to go.”

“He won’t,” said Roland. He drew in a deep breath, then another. “I smell water.”

**Author's Note:**

> The items Roland fishes off the gas station shelf, in order of description:
> 
> Diet Pepsi, Starbucks Double Espresso, Cactus Cooler, Red Delicious apple, Twinkie, Tic Tacs, Twizzlers, Funyuns, Butterfinger.


End file.
